


natasha romanov, relationship guru

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Banter, Dating, Developing Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 00:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1878315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Natasha Romanov gives advice it’s not because she’s asked to, or because she cares, but because she genuinely can’t help herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	natasha romanov, relationship guru

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hjea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hjea/gifts).



> Inspired the tag spiral my friend went on in [this tumblr post](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com/post/78800209367/rustincohle-new-4-minute-trailer-someone) the day the newest Winter Soldier trailer was released, where she talked about how clearly, Natasha is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s relationship instigator. Though this took awhile to come into being, it's safe to say that based on how the film turned out, there's probably some underlying truth to that. The first part of this fic was initially written [here](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com/post/78820569899/and-holy-shit-heather-i-hate-you-so-much-i-need-to) a few months ago. 
> 
> Love and thanks to [fidesangelus](fidesangelus.tumblr.com) for beta.

The first time Natasha Romanov gives advice it’s not because she’s asked to, or because she cares, but because she genuinely can’t help herself.

S.H.I.E.L.D. tells her to keep her mouth shut, Barton warns her that she should lie low, and he never really explains it all but Natasha isn’t dumb, quickly gleans all she needs to know from muttered words that include “trust issues” and “unstable” after she sneaks past Hill’s door.

“…potentially disloyal, don’t you dare _think_ about it, Barton.”

She laughs to herself, goes back to her small bunker of a room and laughs some more, is still laughing when Clint walks in five minutes later with a frown.

“What’s so funny?”

Natasha shrugs, her lips folding into a smirk. “You.”

“Me?” Clint looks dubious. “That’s a new one. We haven’t even known each other for a month, and you’re already making fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun of you,” Natasha replies, her voice turning a shade serious. “Yet.” She sits on the small bed, folding her legs into a triangle and Clint lets out a sigh.

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough,” she returns with another smirk. “Enough to know that not only was I rescued by a world renowned archer, but also by S.H.I.E.L.D.’s resident fratboy.”

Clint rolls his eyes, crossing his arms. “Okay. Jenna from legal? That was one time. And Pam in accounting, _she_ came onto _me_ , so I get a pass. And Bobbi doesn’t count,” he adds though Natasha remains imperiously silent throughout his defense.

“For your information,” he continues with a glare, “I was talking about taking you on as a partner. Not a girlfriend.”

She’s pretty sure he might be lying. She’s almost _definitely_ sure he’s lying. But the Red Room had taught Natasha that it was important to be able to read people, and when you didn’t have a precious five minutes to study your target, you needed to figure out a way to pick up on someone’s personality and thoughts before you got yourself killed. She’s had Clint’s tells picked out since he first cornered her on the streets of Odessa, backing her into a narrow alley of the harbor town and pulling his bow.

And while she knows he may be easily distracted, and a bit of an annoyance, Natasha can tell by the way the muscles in his cheek remain immobile that he’s telling the truth.

“You’re still a frat boy,” is all she says in return, swinging her legs off the bed, suddenly very eager to be alone. He’s standing in front of the door, blocking it with his body, and she has half a mind to maneuver him out of the way until he steps aside at the last second, letting her pass.

“So, is that a yes?”

Natasha turns, spinning on her heel. “You want some advice, Barton? Don’t bother with Jenna – she’s flaky, it would never work. Pam’s too high strung; you would clash worse than Hill and Fury on a good day. And Bobbi is never going to change the way you want her to, and is always going to leave you wishing you did something better.” She grabs for the door, holding it ajar with her foot and soaking in the satisfaction of surprise she sees spreading across his face.

“As for your offer, I’ll think about it.”

 

***

 

In between taking on assignments or sparring at headquarters, Natasha more or less makes it her mission to figure out the personalities of everyone around her.

It’s something she’s done in every situation where she’s been undercover, whether it’s for three days or three months, and also one of the first responsibilities she routinely appoints herself after arriving somewhere with a new alias. Often, it doesn’t take long to study people and figure out their strengths and weaknesses, the things she can do to exploit them and bring them down or what she can use to play people into her traps. S.H.I.E.L.D. is somewhat different, though, mostly because everyone walks around with some sort of mask that they don’t want to lower.

Some of them are easy – Hill is a moments study, easy tells and a behavior that’s clearly more of a front than she would ever admit to. But some of them are harder - Avery takes near a week of stealth spying, and Fisher, well, she’s still not sure, but given what she’s picked up in the cafeteria she’s starting to lean towards the fact that his eccentric personality could be considered more amusing than scary.

And then sometimes (or really, all the time) she comes back to her partner, because he was a study in of himself. He’s easy to figure out on the surface - and why anyone hadn’t been able to do so before her remained a mystery - but everything she’s had him pegged as when they first met seems to dissipate the more they spend time together.

(Still, she doesn’t miss the way he winks at the newer recruits in training, or boasts in meetings about his superior track record. On the other hand, they never spend enough time apart for her to think he has any interest in pursuing someone else, which keeps her supremely confused.)

Natalie Rushman never had a partner. Neither did Laura Matthers, or Yelena Belova. But Natasha Romanov is going on six months of being partners with Clint Barton and starting to realize that, while it’s a development she would have never expected, it’s also one that she finds strangely grounding.

She gives her second round of advice when they’re crouched behind a building in Mao having narrowly escaped a rainfall of bullets and explosions from a warehouse just a few blocks away, her gun at her cheek and his arrow at his shoulder.

“Why haven’t you asked out Cynthia from accounting yet?”

“What?” Clint asks distractedly. Natasha raises her eyebrow.

“I’m just saying. I like her, and I think she’d work well with you. I’m wondering why you haven’t asked her out yet.”

“Are you really trying to say I need a relationship, Romanov?” He tightens his grip on the curve of his bow. “Don’t you have better things to do than figure out how to control my personal life?” Predictably, their comms choose that exact moment to crackle with instruction.

“I think she’d love a good challenge,” Natasha remarks with nonchalance as she leaps to her feet on his six, shooting confidently to cover his exposed back as he calls out warnings and takes out a hoard of men with the rest of his arrows.

“Cynthia? Really?” Clint asks later, when they’re on the quinjet heading back to the Helicarrier, and she’s pressing an icepack to the back of his palm. “I mean, she’s so _full_ of herself.”

“Exactly,” Natasha replies with a smirk, and she notices that he doesn’t disprove her words.

 

***

 

It doesn’t take long for Fury to pick up on what’s going on, and by some miracle, Natasha has the good grace of being in the bathroom when her boss chooses to barge into Clint’s room without properly knocking.

“Barton, what the hell is your partner doing?”

“Excuse me?” Clint looks up from his arrows, his tone harboring confusion, and Fury crosses his arms.

“I want to know what the hell she’s doing,” he repeats roughly as Clint puts picks up an arrow and lays it down slowly on the table.

“Sir, I’m not quite sure what you mean.”

“Ten days,” Fury barks out, shaking his head. “Four hook-ups in ten days, Barton! I haven’t seen this much inter-office action since Stark tried to infiltrate the system with an online dating website.”

Clint wants to argue back that he hasn’t seen his boss so upset over something that wasn’t a life and death situation since he first joined S.H.I.E.L.D., and resists the urge to laugh out loud as he suppresses the thought.

“Maybe people are just getting tired of being alone,” he replies in the most level tone possible, which causes a one-eyed glare and the vein in Fury’s temple to pulsate angrily.

“I better not be worrying about you,” he grumbles as he heads for the door. “Right now, you and Romanov are about the about one good thing that hasn’t been screwed up yet.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Clint replies almost too quickly, waving his arms distractedly as Fury exits the room, slamming the door behind him. Natasha waits another five minutes before emerging behind him.

“That won’t be a problem, huh?” the corners of her mouth quirk, and she runs a hand over the curve of his back.

“Natasha, I swear to god –”

“Don’t worry, Barton.” She raises an eyebrow. “Unlike you, I’m pretty sure I know how to keep a secret.”

 

***

 

Two weeks before Valentine’s Day, Natasha adds another couple to her list, much to Fury’s dismay.

“Sitwell, Baker, Gomez and Marquez…that’s four,” Clint says, making a note on a post-it that he keeps in the drawer of his dresser before they head downstairs for an impromptu sparring session. “Why Sitwell?”

“I don’t know.” Natasha shrugs, her movements seamless with her punches. “He seemed lonely. And he also seemed to be giving himself a wet dream whenever he looked at Wendy,” she adds almost thoughtfully. Clint throws a wide blow to her face that she neatly dodges, sinking to take his legs out from underneath him with a clean cut of her thighs. He goes down with a cry and a string of swears, and she hides a smile.

“And why Wong?” he grits out as he rubs at his legs, attempting to stand. Natasha shrugs again.

“She lost her partner in a bad mission, and hasn’t really been doing much. I just thought she could use the company.”

Clint rises to his full height, staring wordlessly before he breaks into a stunned laugh. “You know, one day, everyone is going to figure this out.”

“Maybe.” Natasha looks nonplussed, stretching an arm over her head. “Maybe not. I’m hardly the first woman in S.H.I.E.L.D. who has bothered to interact with other agents.”

“But you’re the only one who everyone knows by name,” Clint points out, readying himself for another round of sparring. Natasha glares and doesn’t give him the opportunity.

“What’s your point?” she asks, undercutting him again, grinning as he goes down at her feet.

 

***

 

She’s barely inside the door of Clint’s apartment when he turns on her, getting up from where he’s been stretched out reading on the couch.

“You know Farber cornered me today before I left headquarters?”

“Hmmm?” Natasha throws her coat on the nearby chair and eases off her boots, only half listening as she rids herself of her gun and the knives hidden inside of her clothing.

“He wants to know if you should be the one giving out relationship advice,” Clint continues, crossing his arms. “Because, and I quote: ‘I’ve seen her rearrange a guy’s head when he didn’t follow her orders.’”

Natasha laughs quietly. “I should rearrange his head for that comment.”

Clint sighs, tossing his book to the floor. “Seriously, Nat. How long are you going to keep this up?”

“Who says I have to keep anything up?” she asks innocently, raising an eyebrow with a look that he recognizes as distinctly territorial. He immediately throws up his hands with a grumble.

“Alright, calm down, Yenta.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Very funny, Barton. Come on, admit it. It would do these boys some good to start acting their age around here.”

Clint snorts, reaching for the television remote. “You keep doing this thing where you think that you’re going to tame them. I’ve known these guys for years, and they’ve never stopped sleeping around. It’s what they _do_. You know, when they’re not saving the world.”

Natasha shrugs, joining him on the couch and wrapping her arms around his body. “I tamed you,” she says quietly, before pressing a kiss to his forehead. Clint frowns.

“I don’t count,” he grumbles as she rests her head on his shoulder, her lips folding into a sly grin.

“Oh, yes you do.”

 

***

 

In the middle of September, when Clint’s away taking care of some mission in Bulgaria that Natasha hasn’t been entirely needed on, Maria Hill marches into the cafeteria and sits down in front of her without saying a word.

“Yes?” Natasha asks tonelessly, not looking up from her wilting salad until Hill clears her throat, her feet tapping against the floor.

“I need help,” she says in a voice that sounds like it’s killing her to even admit it. Natasha does look up then, raising her eyebrow.

“I don’t remember signing up to be an advice column,” she says finally, reading the unasked question on the other woman’s face, and Hill glares.

“Don’t forget who saved your life, Romanov.”

“I remember every day,” Natasha replies just as evenly, catching the way Hill’s pupils casually drift to the small silver arrow resting at the curve of her neck. She sighs.

“I have no idea how, or why, but word has it that you’re S.H.I.E.L.D.’s resident cupid.”

“I’m no one’s anything,” Natasha responds immediately, her eyes flaring. “Who told you that?”

Hill sits back, folding her arms, and suddenly looks like she’s going to lose it for real. “Never mind. The point is, since you’ve been here, you’ve set up about sixteen different agents. Some even of the same sex. How the hell do you do it?”

Natasha shrugs, focusing on a cucumber. “Intuition? Lucky guesses? Magic?”

When she looks up again, Hill looks more annoyed than Natasha thinks possible. She gets up, scraping a chair out behind her without bothering to respond and when she leaves, Natasha does some stealth work of her own, finding out about her supervisor’s upcoming trip to the Philippines.

Two days later, Hill is surprised to find that despite the fact she’s been tasked to her assignment alone, she’s going to be working with another agent whom she hasn’t seen in years – a no nonsense woman named Melinda May, who has a knack for getting the job done cleanly and without much fuss.

She’s also pretty easy to get along with, and shares Hill’s dry sense of humor and contempt for authority.

Hill acknowledges Natasha when she gets back, seeking her out in the gym to offer her thanks. It’s nothing more than a curt nod, but Natasha counts it as a win, anyway.

 

***

 

By the time the S.H.I.E.L.D. Christmas party rolls around, Natasha’s set up at least half of the agents in the organization, a third of which are experiencing lasting relationships and a fraction of which have experienced (in their words) “reasonably good” one night stands.

“I have to hand it to you,” Coulson says, reaching for the punch and handing her a glass. “When we brought you in, we thought that the worst thing you could do to us was set the building on fire.”

“Glad to have proved you wrong,” Natasha replies dryly, downing her drink. Coulson sighs.

“That’s a compliment, Agent Romanov.”

“And I didn’t say that I didn’t appreciate it,” she returns, lowering her cup to the table. “By the way, how’s the cellist?”

“That’s classified,” Coulson replies tightly, and Natasha can’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“Classified, huh? Do I get a raise?”

Coulson shakes his head, eyeing the agents around the room, but Natasha doesn’t miss the small smile flitting across her handler’s face.

“Like I said - it’s a compliment. Good job, Romanov.”

He moves away, winding throughout the room and passing in and out of other circles of agents as Clint sidles up behind him to take his place, as though he’s been waiting in line like a teenager at a high school dance.

“Barton!” she hisses as his arm wraps around her waist, edging out of his grasp as he feigns disappointment.

“Aw, come on. Doesn’t S.H.I.E.L.D.’s relationship guru want a kiss under the mistletoe?”

“Later,” she growls under her breath, finding his hand and dragging him away from intentionally prying eyes. She slips behind one of the flimsy curtains that she figures he’s probably helped set up in the first place, leading him through the shadows, until they’re far enough away that they can move into one of the empty storage areas without anyone noticing.

“We’re supposed to keep this between us,” she says firmly as she closes and locks the door in one fluid move.

“Yes,” Clint replies, gesturing to the pitch-black room and reaching a hand up to find her hair as she moves close to him. “And right now, I’d say this is definitely between us.” Before she can respond, he presses his lips to her mouth, his tongue tracing the edge of her teeth.

Natasha kisses him back, partly because she’s being forced to but mostly because she realizes that she _wants_ to, and has been wanting to since they both walked into the room and were forced to separate in order to not draw attention. Her arms circle the back of his neck, pulling him close, while their mouths explore one another’s relentlessly until they both come up for air.

“What the hell was that for?” Her words are sharp, but she’s smiling, can just barely see his own smile reflected in the dim lighting. Clint looks up.

“Mistletoe,” he says cheekily, swinging a delicately small twig back and forth in front of her eyes, the small twigs glinting. Natasha shakes her head.

“I can’t believe you.”

“Can’t believe I found a mistletoe, or that I managed to get you away from the party?”

Natasha smiles wryly. “Both,” she admits, shoving him back roughly. Clint shrugs.

“I picked up a few things from your line of work. Plus, I figured owed you, considering the fact that you looked pretty pissed when everyone else got their own moment back there.” He lets his head dip close to her ear, his own breath tickling her skin, and she sighs.

“Was it really that obvious?”

“Only to me,” Clint replies, threading his hands through her hair and moving them down her neck. “I can read people, you know.”

“And don’t forget who taught you that,” she reminds him, her tongue finding the curve of his ear, not missing the groan that vibrates through his body. The sound makes her smile against his skin.

“Point taken.”

Natasha pulls away slightly, locking onto his gaze. “So tell me,” she says carefully, her fingers trailing down his chest. “What else have you learned? Would you say, for example, that I pass the test of being vetted for a certain S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Clint Barton?”

Clint smirks into the darkness, drawing her close.

“With flying colors,” he responds, closing his lips over her skin.

**Author's Note:**

> i. Accurate or not, god bless [this website](http://marvel.wikia.com/List_of_S.H.I.E.L.D._members) for providing me with research for the many names of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that I needed to use in order to build this universe.
> 
> ii. "Calm down, yenta" was a request by text that I was happy to make work.


End file.
